'Inept' bomb plotters sentenced

NEW YORK, June 30 (UPI) -- A New York judge has sentenced three Muslim converts he called "inept" to 25 years in prison for plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military aircraft.

Ex-convicts James Cromitie, Onta Williams and David Williams were spared the life terms prosecutors had urged by a judge who said Wednesday it was clear "beyond a shadow of a doubt" the plot would never have been hatched if not for a federal undercover operation, saying ringleader Cromitie was "so utterly inept," real terrorists wouldn't have "bothered themselves" with him, the New York Post reported.

"Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, a man whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope," U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon said.

The men were arrested in May 2009 after conspiring with an informant who infiltrated a Nation of Islam mosque.

They were taken into custody as they planted fake bombs, provided to them by the FBI as part of the sting operation, at two synagogues in Riverdale, N.Y.